Part 66

Armis from armi not arma. Wase’s version is wrong. The term is more commonly applied to the shoulder or arm of animals than man: but the sense of the passage requires the interpretation I have put upon it, and is farther illustrated by the “unguibus et pugnis” of Horace, and “meræ vires” of Ovid:

Tum genus humanum solis errabat in agris; Hisque meræ vires, et rude corpus erat.

Politian elegantly exemplifies the Faliscian’s meaning in his Silva, entitled Nutricia;

Sed longum tamen obscuris immersa tenebris Gens rudis, atque inculta virûm, sine more, sine ullâ Lege propagabant ævum, passimque ferino Degebant homines ritu, visque insita cordi Mole obsessa gravi, nondùm ullos prompserat usus, Nil animo, duris agitabant cuncta lacertis.

For Perseus’s title to this post of honour Oppian is my only voucher; but his words are decisive:

ἐν μερόπεσσι δὲ πρῶτος ὁ Γοργόνος αὐχέν’ ἀμέρσας, Ζηνὸς χρυσείοιο πάϊς κλυτὸς εὕρατο Περσεύς.

Will the reader admit the explanation of the Policraticus as to the fabulous connexion of these hybrids with the chase: “nempe qui his studiis aut desidiis insistunt, semiferi sunt, et abjectâ potiore humanitatis parte, ratione morum prodigiis conformantur?” and again, “Venatores omnes adhuc institutionem redolent Centaurorum. Rarò invenitur quisquam eorum modestus aut gravis,” &c.

“The light-footed Greek of Chiron’s school,” as Churchill calls him.

τὸν ἐθάμβεεν Ἄρτε- μίς τε καὶ θρασεῖ’ Ἀθάνα, Κτείνοντ’ ἐλάφους ἄνευ κυ- νῶν δολίων θ’ ἑρκέων· ποσσὶ γὰρ κράτεσκεν.

Nec mediocre pacis decus habebatur submota campis irruptio ferarum, et obsidione quâdam liberatus agrestium labor.

According to Manilius the power of fashioning implements of hunting, breeding dogs of good pedigrees, breaking them in, &c. is derived from sidereal influence at our nativities:

At Procyon oriens, quum jam vicesima Cancri Septimaque ex undis pars sese emergit in astra, Venatus non ille quidem, verum arma creatis Venandi tribuit: catulos nutrire sagaces, Et genus à proavis, mores numerare per artes, Retiaque, et validâ venabula cuspide fixa, Lentaque contextis formare hastilia nodis, Et quodcumque solet venandi poscere cura In proprios fabricare dabit venalia quæstus.

We have the authority of the most ancient record of British field spoils, called =Mayster of Game=, (a curious manuscript in the British Museum,) for the general use of much of the classic furniture of the chase in France and England five centuries ago. Let the reader compare the following with the Greek and Latin Cynegetica: “Of the Hare, and the methods of taking her. Men slee hares with greyhoundes and with rennynghoundes by strengthe, as in Engelond; but ellis where thei slee hem with smale pocketes and wt p^rsuetes and wt smale nettis, with hare pipes and with long nettis and with smale cordes that men casten where thei mak here brekyng of the smale twygges whan thei goon to hure pasture,” &c.—“Of the Herte. Men taken hem with houndis, with greyhoundis, with nettis, and with cordes, and with other harnays; with puttes and with shott, and with other gynnes, and with strengthe, as y shal say here after,” &c. Almost all the instruments of this royal armoury, the fruits of De Langley’s extensive experience at home and abroad, and as such recorded in his hunting manual, have their counterparts in the works of Xenophon, Gratius, Oppian, and Nemesian.

“We are not sensible of Gratius’s great care in the choice and ordering of speares,” in the language of his illustrator, “nor of his provision in showing to set engines, and dig pits, which men prize in those countries where beares and lyons, with such ravenous beasts, do abound. We seem to have a different end in our hunting, which hath introduced a different stile of hunting,” &c.

The arts of war and hunting advanced passibus æquis; both at first equally rude, and destitute of ingenuity of contrivance in their respective instruments of assault:

Unguibus et pugnis, dein fustibus, atque ità porrò Pugnabant armis quæ post fabricaverat usus.

Before the age of Homer, the bow and arrow, “the artillery of ancient heroes,” the ἔγχος or δόρυ, spear or pike, ξίφος the sword, and κορύνη the club, constituted the entire armoury of the warriors and hunters of semi-barbarous Greece. See Iliad +xi.+ and +xvii.+ Odyss. +ix.+ and +xix.+ How scanty was the furniture of Hercules in his attack of the Nemean lion!

αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ κέρας ὑγρὸν ἑλὼν, κοίλην τε φαρέτραν, Ἰῶν ἐμπλείην, νεόμην· ἑτέρῃφι τε βάκτρον εὐπαγὲς, αὐτόφλοιον, ἐπηρεφέος κοτίνοιο, εὔμετρον.

The Persian hunting of Cyrus, as described in the Cyropædia, (L. +i.+ c. +v.+), presents us with warlike weapons alone. “Than tooke every man” (I quote from The Governour) “with hym his bowe and quiver with arowes, his sword or hach of steele, a little tergat, and two dartes.”

“The formido,” Wase admonishes the reader of his Preface to Gratius, “may be in some measure retriv’d by looking into the Sicilian hunting, where it continues in use at this day. When the nobles or gentry are inform’d which way a herd of dear passeth, giving notice to one another, they make a meeting. Every one brings with him a cross-bow or long-bow, and a bundle of staves. These staves have an iron spike at the bottom, and their head is boared with a cord drawn through all of them. Their length is about four foot. Being thus provided, they come to the herd, and there casting themselves about into a large ring, they surround the deer, and then every one of them receives a peculiar stand, and there unbinding his fagot, ties the end of his cord to the other who is set in the next station; then to support it, sticks into the ground each staffe about the distance of ten foot one from another. Then they take out feathers which they bring with them dyed in crimson for this very purpose, and fastned upon a thrid which they tie to the cord, so that with the least breath of wind they are whirl’d round about. Those which keep the severall stands, withdraw, and hide themselves in the next covert. After this the chiefe ranger enters within the line, taking with him only some hounds, which draw after the herd, and coming near with their cry, rouse it. Upon which, the deer fly till they come towards the line, where they turn off to the left, and still gazing upon the shining and shaking feathers, wander about it as if they were kept in with a wall or pale. The chief ranger pursues, and calling to every one by name, as he passeth by their stand, cries to them that they should shoot the first, third, or sixth, as he shall please; and if any of them miss or single out any other then that which was assigned by the ranger, it is counted a disgrace to him: by which means, as they pass by the severall stations, the whole herd is kill’d by diverse hands.... These stakes are of the same use with those ancones mention’d in Gratius, but it might seem that they are farther improv’d.”—“These things,” continues the translator of the Faliscian, “may be of use to have been premitted;” and with the same view they are here introduced by the author of this Appendix.

The staves of the Sicilians are the ancones of Gratius—the στάλικες and σχάλιδες of the Greek hunters.

The complete and helpless entanglement of the victim of the tunnel-net is admirably described by Seneca, in the simile of The Agamemnon, where Cassandra likens the son of Atreus, ensnared in a cassi-form vest (so happily called by Æschylus πημονὴν ἀρκύστατον) by the “semivir” Thyestes and the adulteress queen-consort, to a boar inextricably enveloped in these toils:

At ille ut altis hispidus sylvis aper, Cum casse vinctus, tentat egressus tamen, Arctatque motu vincla, et incassùm furit, Cupit fluentes undique et cæcos sinus Disjicere, et hostem quærit implicitus suum.

See the definitions of Pollux in my notes to the first Chapter of Arrian’s Cynegeticus—ἄρκυες, δίκτυα, ἐνόδια.

“In Poland, when the king hunts,” observes Wase, “his servants are wont to surround a wood, though to the space of a mile or better in compasse, with toiles, which are pitched upon firme stakes: this being done, the whole town, all sexes and ages, promiscuously rush into the inclosure, and with their loud shouts rear all the beasts within that wood, which making forth, are intercepted in the nets. There small and great beasts are together intangled, after the same manner as when amongst us we draw a net over a pond, and after beating it all over with poles, we bring out not only pike and carp, but lesser fry: so they enclose at once, dear, and bores, and roe-bucks, and hares: for so they order their nets, that the space of those meshes which are twisted with greater cords, for the entangling of greater beasts—that space, I say, is made up with smaller whip-cord, for the catching lesser prey.” See Xenophon de Venatione, c. +vi.+, and pausanias in bœoticis, c. +xxi.+ The latter author relates that the Celtic hunters surrounded plains and mountain-thickets with their toils, so as to be certain of catching all the animals within the circumference thereof.

Such were the σειραὶ of the Parthians, applied to the purposes of human warfare: for it is evident from Josephus’s account of Tiridates’s narrow escape from the Alan σειραφόρος—(βρόχον γὰρ αὐτῷ τὶς πόῤῥωθεν περιβαλὼν ἔμελλεν ἐπισπάσειν, εἰ μὴ τῷ ξίφει θᾶττον ἐκεῖνος τὸν τόνον κόψας, ἔφθη διαφυγεῖν,)—that the instrument employed against the king was of the nature of a laqueus. And a farther illustration of the use of the noose-rope in war we find in the lines of Valerius Flaccus,

Doctus et Auchates patulo vaga vincula gyro Spargere, et extremas laqueis adducere turmas.

Some idea of the curraces laquei, and hunting nets duly set, may be formed from the engravings of Strada and Galle (1578.); or those of the Venationes Ferarum &c. of Collært, Mallery, Theodore and Cornelius Galle of later date. The spirited woodcuts of John Adam Lonicer, of Francfort, attached to the Venatus et Aucupium of Sigismund Feyerabendi (1582), are amusing, but far less illustrative than the former.